Winter habitat selection by two sympatric species chital and nilgai was studied in the semi-arid environment from January 2006 for four months. Pellet group count was used to study the degree of habitat segregation at spatial scale. A total of 2042 pellet groups of chital and 255 pellet groups of nilgai were recorded at 100 sampling points laid randomly across five different habitat types. Chi squared analysis and resource selection indices revealed that both species utilized different habitat categories differentially thereby giving a pattern of selectivity amongst resource states. Chital utilized, more than its availability, woodland habitat with high shrub density and diversity and sparsely available grass and herb cover which formed under storey during winter. Nilgai, on the other hand, showed utilization, more than availability in dense to discontinuous thickets with high tree density and shrub cover to browse. Chital showed a wider niche breadth (0.911) in comparison to nilgai (0.766) with an overall niche overlap of 0.762. The segregation between the two species during winter was hypothesized to be low with high overlap at the spatial scale. It was found that there is high potential for competition between the two species, and the presence of one species may negatively influence the distributional pattern of the other.
